US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton reckons there is a "right to free use and access" that could be infringed by countries banning BlackBerrys.
The US government steps into the argument as concern over the difficulties of intercepting BlackBerry communications continues to spread, with Lebanon being the latest country to voice …

I find this whole bruhaha to be amusing :-)

definition?

It may be a good idea to ask RIM what "...company therefore provides access to messages in response to legitimate requests from law enforcement." actually means. What is legitimate. Can the NSA request informations about my inner UK mails and phone calls? Does it have to be signed by a judge or is a "more informal" request by security agencies/police/whatever sufficient for RIM to hand over data? Come on El Reg ask the question.

The ONLY reason that the US would step up to the plate for a Canadian ...

is because the U.S. has easy access to the RIM servers - the US, Canada and the UK are all members of Echelon - and the Bin Laden type comms they are desperate for. No more convenient ways exist than to access high quality data, with or without RIM's cooperation. than RIM servers rather traipsing around to all those e-mail servers dotted around the globe.

Nothing but nothing beats independently sourced encryption software - RIM's scrambling techniques and keys are common to all BlackBerries other than Obama's customised units.

Using software applied to individual handsets makes it hard for centralised monitoring as the odd encrypted call might easily be passed off as a bad connection if detected at any point. Using two handsets at each end of the conversation, one at each end used on different carrier networks

fishing trips

At least having a secure connection to a private companies servers reduces the chance you get caught in some government fishing trip where they just sample a big band of traffic and nick anyone who sends anything suspicious looking.

Nah

This will be the Clinton calling the Pot Black then

Seriously,

The administration that denied export of PGP and tried to enforce the clipper chip "encryption" upon the global market so that their forces of darkness, sorry CIA and justice department, could intercept anything they wanted whenever they wanted without anyone else's knowledge or permission.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha, perhaps they could lecture us on human rights or data privacy (SWIFT) or foreign policy whilst they have the hypocrisy hat on?

Am I the only one...

Who thinks this is one of the most fcuking ridiculous history of the entire IT History.

So one Canadian company happens to have a well designed device that happens to offer some degree of privacy.

Then governments complain using the argument that the encryption on the device is so well done that in places they can not intercept it.

Cool. I would expect non-democratic countries (you know those that did not contribute anything to human progress for a hundred years or more) complain about it. But the democratic ones too? that's too much...

Now someone would say to me that the democratic countries enjoy spying on their own citizens? And agreeing with the non-democratic ones on the spying methods.

There's the rub

"... the company therefore provides access to messages in response to legitimate requests from law enforcement"

Thereby nullifying the whole point of encrypting in the first place.

As for Clinton's "legitimate right of free use and access", I have wonder if she understands that denying use and access is the primary function of most US gubber-mental agencies, DHS, FCC and FDA come immediately to mind. Typically under the auspices of protection or "for the children" but in reality, not so much.

This is a title ?

Let em have access, free and across the board. The end result will be a culling of the low hanging fruit, the ones too stupid to take precautions against interception. If any terrorist orgainisation is dumb enough to rely on RIM for encryption then they deserve to be wiped out.

For all the Daily Mail readers out there, the above statement is not a statement of policy but a poor attempt at humour and may not be copy/pasted into the letters page.

What is legitimate

I think there are probably a lot of issues around what different countries consider legitimate. Many western nations have very similar perspectives and thus don't have an issue with the current setup.

I can't imagine anyone in North America who would be willing to continue using BB if they knew that their data could be arbitrarily read by the government of countries that stone people to death for moral crimes, or arrest tourist for "immodest dress".

Right to use and access? says you and what army?

Countries are free to lay down the law as they see fit. Though other countries often don't see it that way and pressure each other to take over their pet laws. Sometimes "freedom" flavoured, sometimes "commerce" or "religion" flavoured. Or even "massive bigcorp greed" flavoured. Or all of the above, at the same time. The country dear ms. Clinton hails from is a major exporter of laws and ideology, like it or not. And a wholesale violator of everybody else's rights, too, but I digress. Anyway, we can always ask her what inalienable right she invented some other country is somehow taking away from their very own citizens. The rationale, such as it is, might even be amusing. In a lookit-dem-politicos sort of way. But then, I take what I can get these days.